Like an automobile, a web application needs occasional maintenance and management over its life cycle. Although it doesn’t need oil changes, it will probably need version upgrades. There may not be manufacturer recalls, but sometimes servers fail or hang. An application doesn’t need to be washed and detailed, but it does need to be backed up. And both cars and applications need occasional performance tuning.
This article provides a complete list of the system management functions that need to be performed on a standard architecture web application, with a particular emphasis on doing so in an Infrastructure-as-a-Service environment.